8 Gold Region of North Carolina. 



strata to which they bear no resemblance, and in general 

 the utmost degree of confusion and disorder, and the raing- 

 ling of soil, sand and gravel, possessing the most heterogen- 

 eous characters. But though I have carefully examined ihe 

 country in the neighborhood of the mines, and at a distance 

 from them, along the roots and on the other side of the 

 mountain, it has never been my lot to meet with these traces 

 of the ravages of a current.* 



2. If it be said that the researches of Mr. Rothe were 

 crowned with better success ; that he found marks of the ac- 

 tion of a current — a.) In the granite near Salisbury, which 

 has been much worn by the action of water in early times — 

 b.) In the acclivous banks of the Yadkin, at the Narrows, 

 shewing that the water was once many feet above its present 

 bed — c.) In the alluvial deposits with which the highest 

 hills near the river, as you go up the country, are covered — I 

 reply — a.) That as his water-worn granite has, by his own 

 account, a very irregular surface, it is from its rounded shape 

 only that he infers that it has been subjected to the action of 

 water. But every geologist knows that the decomposing 

 agency of the elements is constantly giving to the rocks a 

 spherical form in all parts of the world — b.) That after 

 passing through the gorge of the Narrows at least a dozen 

 times ; inspecting both banks, and extending my examina- 

 tion in three instances below the Great Falls, I have never 

 been able to discover the marks of which he speaks — c.) 

 That I have traversed the mountains about the Narrows in 

 a number of different directions, and have never, except 



* Neither the Blue Ridge, nor any other single range constitutes the barrier 

 to be passed, but a body of table land, elevated some hundreds of feet above 

 the general level of the western countries, having its upper surface studded 

 with mountains, and the climate, productions and modes of culture of coun- 

 tries five or six degrees farther north. Ashe county lies upon the head wa- 

 ters of the Kenhawa and Watauga rivers. As an evidence of the wide differ- 

 ence between the temperature of this county and the county lying below the 

 ridge, I may mention that the blackberry (rubus villosus) began to riptn in 

 the midland counties this year by the 12th of June, and to decay and drop off 

 three weeks after, but was still green in Ashe at the latter date, and not uiore 

 advanced on the 16th or 18th of July than it had been in Guilford county four 

 or five weeks before. Strawberries were in perfection in an open pasture and 

 southern exposure, about the summit of the White-Top, a mountain just with- 

 in the limits of Virginia, on the 10th of July. The forests, throughout this re- 

 gion were whitened with the blossoms of the chesnut and linn (tilia) on the 

 15th. The blackberry (rubus villosus) was in flower, and forming its acini 

 near the summit of the Grandfather on the 14th, 



